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How Tech Almost Lost the War
An anonymous reader writes "Blame the geeks for the mess in Iraq? Wired says so. Networked troops were supposed to be so efficient, it'd take just a few of 'em to wipe out their enemies. But the Pentagon got their network theory all wrong, with too few nodes and a closed architecture. Besides, a more efficient killing machine is the last thing you want in an insurgency like Iraq."
A president and Secretary of Defense who were concerned with creating popular support for a war are responsible. They ignored reports from military and civilian groups assigned to study the problems with a post-invasion Iraq, that the administration had themselves created, that a larger force would be needed to prevent the destruction of critical infrastructure. Even then, better deployment of available troops could have prevented much of the immediate post-war chaos. However, the current situation is more a creation of a corrupt system of bidding on construction contracts. Many of these contracts are wildly over budget and half-completed. I seriously doubt that you can blame a highly networked military for that.
Blame the geeks for the mess in Iraq
How about we blame Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and the other "Hawks" for single-mindedly pushing a US foreign policy doctrine of preemption, which led to a war based on falsified "evidence" of a laughable "threat" to the US?
Networked troops were supposed to be so efficient, it'd take just a few of 'em to wipe out their enemies.
We did beat the "enemy"; only Saddam's core Republican Guard put up any sort of fight. The major fuck-up in the initial "war" was Rumsfeld repeatedly cutting supply lines and over-extending troops.
Then we failed to fill the power vacuum in a country with a history of sectarian violence even under a brutal dictator. Worse, we failed to keep the power, lights, and water going which left the door open for opportunists. Iraq fell head-first into a sectarian civil war, with both sides, most of the world, and half of the United States population agreeing on one thing: we need to get the fuck out of their country.
It's hard to "wipe out" your enemy when every day you create more just by your mere meddling presence. It's like standing in a bathtub holding a garden hose, wondering why the water's rising.
Please help metamoderate.
Or maybe we could stop killing them.
We hope your rules and wisdom choke you / Now we are one in everlasting peace
hmm.. Wouldn't it be more cost effective just to pay each of the insurgents half that and convert them to like us?
--jeffk++
ipv6 is my vpn
Actually, I thought the IEEE's take on this (the Open Source Warfare article) was more insightful. A different issue that you point out, however, is that of clueless generals.
The basic problem is that the problem is not the insurgency-- it is the lack of law and order in Iraq. The insurgency is one manifestation of that, but the lack of law and order allowed them to grow and consolidate from a few hundred tiny groups to several larger networks (see the International Crisis Group's works on the insurgency). We are in a situation in Iraq where the US military is very good at killing people but not very good at fighting the insurgency because we can't do what we need to in terms of controlling the situation on the ground.
You don't want a smaller number of more deadly soldiers. You need a larger number of policemen. We can't do it and we don't train our army to do it. So yes, one has to blame the generals.
However, the issue from the IEEE article was that the insurgent groups are able to use methods that look an similar to those found in the open source community to adapt their tactics much faster than the US military can (the US military is at least an order of magnitude slower in this regard due to standardization, procurement practices, etc). By the time new tactics are underway, the insurgent groups quickly adapt and those tactics are less useful.
The second issue is that for every expensive weapon, there is a cheap and easily available countermeasure. Note that HARM's aren't used much since Kosovo because it is now common knowledge that there are sub-$100 countermeasures using commercial off-the-shelf parts for them (cheap microwave ovens have the same RF as the anti-aircraft radar and HARMS cannot distinguish between them). The Serbians may have lost but I wonder how much damage they caused US military R&D with that one.... Smart bombs also could be conceivably confused using inexpensive jamming devices. In the end, unless you are willing to commit the people to the ground
In short, I personally do not believe that the war in Iraq is winnable under the conditions that W has set out. We will lose that one unless we can make some very difficult choices before the patience of the American people wears out.
In short one needs lots of police on the ground relying less on military weapons technology. We need to stop using American mercenaries (like Blackwater) because they have an inherent conflict of interest. And we need to be willing to withhold our support for the Iraqi government if certain basic measures are not met. These things are not going to happen so we are not going to win.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
It would be more cost-effective to buy an apartment for every family in Iraq.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
From an Army Officer that just got back from Iraq I think the article is hilarious. Technology made my life there incredibly easy and difficult at the same time. Our ability to mass combat power in a short period of time was amazing. That same technology that allowed us to communicate also crippled us when it stopped working. Thank God for the enlisted Soldiers that knew how to use "doohickey Y" when everything went to shit. Blaming the problems of Iraq on technology is ridiculous.
The problem with Iraq is that we think that we can enforce democracy on a country that simply isn't interested in it. My apologies to any civilized Muslims that read this blog, but Southeast Asia Shiite and Sunni sects that dominate Iraq are not interested in allowing people to have an influence in the government. They desire and will ensure that they have full domination over the population. The truth is the population is just fine with that. They are very dedicated to their tribes and will do whatever their respective Sheik tells them to do. I personally think that if you want to solve the problem in Iraq you should allow whatever form of government that works best develop from the ground up. Stop trying to impose democracy. I don't know of any government that has successfully imposed democracy on another country. Democracy will either develop over time from the inside out or it will not develop at all.
they're disagreements about superstitious bullshit
Some of it is, sure, but a lot of it relates to centuries of real injustice. I don't even remember the details (there's too damn many), but the book "Battle For God" by Karen Armstrong details how these groups have, through many massacres and assassinations, gone far beyond the point where either would back down. That kind of retributive behavior is common human nature. In that regard the Iraqis are no more ridiculous than us.
Figuring out how to end a centuries old blood feud is left as an exercise to the reader.
Cheers.
Peacefully Occupy. Orwell would be proud.